Nuclear fusion power has the potential to produce safe and clean energy in great abundance. Nuclear fusion does not produce as many radioactive particles as nuclear fission, produces more power than fission, averts many international complications by not producing weapons-grade byproducts prevalent in uranium-based fission systems, and is easier and less dangerous to control during failure as compared to a runaway fission reaction. Unfortunately, the technology developments required to initiate an economically significant fusion reaction are greater than for fission systems and so the latter has achieved more rapid development.
Several approaches presently seek to achieve sustainable fusion (producing more energy than was input to the system) with varying degrees of developmental success. For example, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has sought to employ a driver laser to compress fusion fuel. Laser energy presents many challenges, however, and progress has not been as rapid as expected. In contrast, more “conservative” inertial approaches, such as the Heavy Ion Fusion methods of the 1970s, remain, in many respects, more practical and effective. In some instances, inertial methods employ proven technologies including conventional accelerator designs using technology which have been extant since at least 1976. However, these accelerator systems often emphasize features appropriate for research purposes and their tools must be retooled, or complemented, before they can be employed for power generation. Fuel ignition demands that considerable energy be delivered in a short period of time and the power levels used at most linear accelerators for research are inadequate.
Accordingly, there exists a need for tools which can complement or supplement existing technologies to achieve the theoretical limits required for fusion ignition.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the logic and process steps illustrated in the various flow diagrams discussed below may be altered in a variety of ways. For example, the order of the logic may be rearranged, substeps may be performed in parallel, illustrated logic may be omitted, other logic may be included, etc. One will recognize that certain steps may be consolidated into a single step and that actions represented by a single step may be alternatively represented as a collection of substeps. The figures are designed to make the disclosed concepts more comprehensible to a human reader. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that actual data structures used to store this information may differ from the figures and/or tables shown, in that they, for example, may be organized in a different manner; may contain more or less information than shown; etc.